The History Of King Kong & Godzilla

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Film Godzilla. The new empire now in theaters, we get to see two legendary screen monsters team up to save the world. On today's show, we're going to recall the origin of these roaring creatures with archive interviews about their first appearances before movie audiences. First King Kong. Come on.

I got him.

He'll be out for hours. Send to the ship for anchor chains and tools. What are you going to do? We'll build a raft to float him to the ship. Why, the whole world will pay to see this.

No chains will ever hold that. We'll give him more than chains. He's always been king of his world. But we'll teach him fear. We're millionaires, boys.

I'll share it with all of you. Why, in a few months, it'll be up in lights on Broadway. Kong, the 8th wonder of the World. That's a scene from the 1933 film King Kong. That was Robert Armstrong as Carl Denham, the producer who journeys to Skull island in the Indian Ocean to capture the giant ape and bring him to New York to star in his nightclub spectacle.

King Kong was directed by Marion C. Cooper, who was himself an adventurer and documentary filmmaker who traveled through Africa and East Asia. Were going to listen to Terry's interview with film historian Rudy Belmer, recorded in 1999 when the soundtrack of King Kong dialogue and music was released on CD. Belmer had written the liner notes. His books include Inside Warner Bros.

And behind the scene. Many things made that original King Kong memorable. The special effects, the image of the giant ape climbing the Empire State Building, the screams of Fay Ray and the score composed by Max Steiner. Here's the opening title. Music.

Terry Gross

Woody Bellmer, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you very much, Terry. Bum bum bum. It doesn't sound as good when I do it as when Mac Steiner did it. Well, he wrote it.

Rudy Behlmer

Yeah. What would you say the importance of Max Steiner's score is for King Kong? I mean, I love the score for this. It's a wonderful score. And of course, he was a pioneer, certainly, in doing sound motion picture scores.

But if you can imagine that picture, if you turn the sound off when you're watching a cassette or seeing it on television, and you turn the sound off during the big sequences, certainly in the jungle and on top of the empire state building and so forth. And you realize how much the sound elements contribute to the success of that film. Not only the sound effects that Murray Spivak created out of roars and grunts and groans and what have you that he manufactured. But also the wonderful dramatic values that Max Steiner brought to it. Because, you know, at that time, when he was beginning to score that in late 1932.

Music throughout, in terms of a underscoring, was not prevalent. It was shortly after sound came in. And the emphasis was on dialogue. In fact, background scoring was relatively sparse. But Max rose to the occasion.

And fortunately, Marion C. Cooper was a staunch advocate. And so was David Selznick, who was the executive producer at RKO radio at the time. And they said, yes, we want a full blooded score. And it certainly became that.

And he, you know, he made that thing work. From a dramatic standpoint, I love the. Score, but I find something very amusing about it. Which is that although it's set on this island, Skull island. The music is really very european.

Terry Gross

And nothing like what would have been heard in the region at that time. And I'll play this scene in a moment. But, you know, when they first get to the island. When the american film crew first gets to the island. And they're watching this native ritual.

The natives are chanting, Kong, Kong, Kong. And there's this march behind them. As a kind of precursor of Kang's footsteps that will be marching toward his prey. And then march is a very european form. And the brass instruments playing it are so european.

And yet this defines a kind of South Sea island or african kind of Hollywood sound. That's true. Well, of course, Max and everybody else associated with this picture. Knew we were dealing with a fantasy here. It's a total fantasy.

Rudy Behlmer

A more. As Cooper said, a more illogical picture could never have been thought up. And it is illogical if you stop and examine it from that standpoint. But the music, you know, they weren't saying, well, wait a minute. We have to get something that's indigenous to this area.

We have to be authentic. We have to be like a documentary. And, you know, it was full reign of the imagination. And, of course, Max composed in a full wagnerian manner. You know, with leitmotifs and with all kinds of percussive effects that could be used.

And he just went all out. And the aspect of credibility, you forget about that. Because once again, we're dealing in the world of fantasy. The ultimate world of fantasy. Well, let's hear that scene where the film crew is observing this native ritual.

Terry Gross

Where the natives are chanting, Kong, what are you. Scrooge is happening. Oh, they're up to some of their eve and tricks. But don't go rushing out to sea. All right.

But isn't it exciting? Sure. I wish we'd left you on a ship. Oh, I'm so glad you did where. It is, you know, wait till I see what goes on.

Holy mackerel. What a show. Hey, skipper, come here and get a load of this.

Ever seen anything like that before in your life?

Terry Gross

Pure musical delirium and frenzy. Frenzy and delirium. I think that would be a good team. Well, the other memorable sounds in King Kong. Include, of course, Fei Rae's screams.

And the roar of Kang himself. Let's start with Fei rae's screams. You know, in the movie, the Carl denim character. The character who wants to, like, wrangle Kong and bring him back for a nightclub act. He says to the Fay Ray character, he's kind of, like, teaching her how to scream.

And he says, okay, pretend you're screaming for your life. Which, of course, she later has to do. Do you know what kind of advice Fay Ray was given about how she should scream? Well, the interesting thing is that, of course, if she had done as much screaming. When they were shooting this film as it appears to be, she would have been hoarse.

Rudy Behlmer

On the fourth day of shooting. Most of her screams were post recorded. After the picture finished shooting, they took her into a. A sound booth, and she did wild screams. And they used those screams.

So, fortunately, she had one major screaming session. Which once again, was after the film finished shooting. And, of course, King Kong has a very memorable roar. What do you know about how that was achieved? Well, a remarkable man by the name of Murray Spivak, who was the head of the sound department at RKO radio Pictures at the time.

He was confronted with this film, you know, and thought, what can I do? It can't sound like some animal. It has to be a distinctive sound. So he went out and he recorded the roar of a lion and the roar of a tiger. And he was playing things at different speeds and playing them backwards and then combining them.

And then even for some of Kong's grunts and things, he recorded himself doing in a little megaphone type deal. So the sound is a kind of a combination of many things. It sounds like a roar, but it's not a roar that you can identify. Which, of course, is what he wanted to do. But by altering the speeds of the recordings.

And taking two different animals and overlapping them, of course, you can do all kinds of things. Well, why don't we hear a nice scene with plenty of screams and roars? And this is, I believe, the first time we actually see Kong. Fei Rei is tied at the stake during another one of these ceremonies. And this scene starts with the chief, played by noble Johnson Karatane Kong o.

Tarave Rama kong Wasaba Sanamaka Otarave Ramo. Kong.

A scene from the 1933 film King Kong. Film historian Rudy Bellmer spoke with Terry Gross in 1999. We'll hear more after a break. This is fresh air. This message comes from NPR sponsor Hulu.

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For more information, that's t dash. Dash health. What's your why? This is Fresh air, and as the new film Godzilla, the new empire appears in theaters. We're listening to Terry's 1999 interview with film historian Rudy Belmer about the original King Kong, released in 1933.

Terry Gross

Now, you know, Carl Denham is the character who's the american promoter determined to capture Kong so he can create a crowd pleasing spectacle, you know, back in New York. And I want to play the scene where he explains why he needs a beautiful actress for the film that he eventually wants to build around Kong. You never had a woman in any of your other pictures. Why do you want one in this? Because the public, bless Em, must have a pretty face to look at.

Well, Mister Denham why not take a picture in a monastery? Makes me sore. I go out in sweat blood to make a swell picture. And then the critics and the exhibitors. All say.

If this picture had love interest, it would gross twice as much. All right. The public wants a girl. And this time I'm gonna give them what they want. I don't know why you're gonna get her.

You think I'm gonna give up just because you can't find me a girl with a backbone? Listen, I'm going out and make the greatest picture in the world. Something that nobody's ever seen or heard of. You'll have to think up a lot of new adjectives when I come back. Where are you going?

I'm going out and get a girl for my picture, even if I have to marry one. Well, Carl Denham is certainly determined to do anything he needs to do to make this picture. Any comparisons you could make between Carl Denham. And the real director of King Kong, Marion Cooper? Well, there are a lot of comparisons.

Rudy Behlmer

Because Marion Cooper was, to a large extent Carl Denham. And Ernest Shozak, his partner, who was the co director. Was to a certain degree the Bruce Cabot character. That's the love interest of Fay Ray. The love interest of Fay Ray, who was the first maid on the junket.

And Ruth Rose was Misses Shodzak. And she wrote the final dialogue script. And Cooper and Shozak had been partners for a long time. They had done a very important documentary called Grass back in 1925. And then they did another one called Chang in 1927.

Where they were actually over in Siam, which was called then and later Thailand. And shot there up in the jungles with the tigers and the elephants and so forth. And they were really adventurous folk. I mean, back then, this was a big deal. And the entire company was Cooper and Shodzak.

They shot their own footage. They directed it. They set it up. They got to know the natives. So this kind of an expedition, of course, was taken to its.

Its fantasy element once again by King Kong. Which was a conception of Marion Cooper's. When he was a young boy of about six. His great uncle gave him a copy of a book that was written in the middle of the 19th century. Called explorations and adventures in Equatorial Africa.

By a man by the name of Paul Duchalus. And in it, he's describing these terrifying gorillas. Which, of course, years later, we've come to realize is not the case. But this was before anybody had really gotten to study the gorillas. And this electrified Cooper as a little kid, he said, and he told me this back in the sixties.

He said, from that point on, I knew I wanted to be an explorer. Well, he did want to become an explorer. And he combined exploring with motion picture making and then later on with aviation. And he was quite. He was an incredible character.

Terry Gross

Cooper refused to use a man in a gorilla suit for King Kong. And so they went with, you know, the puppet and stop time animation. Why didn't he want to use a man in a gorilla suit? It certainly would have been a lot easier. Well, he felt that this had to be something different.

Rudy Behlmer

And, of course, there'd always been these men running around in gorilla suits in all kinds of movies that were made in the twenties and early thirties. And, you know, that was fine. But he wanted to do something special. And when he saw over at RKO, Willis O'Brien, who was the chief technician working on some stop motion material for a picture called creation, which was never made, and he saw these dinosaurs, he thought, wait a minute. Nobody's going to finance me during the depression to go over to Africa and shoot a gorilla and then bring the gorilla to Komodo and so forth and so forth.

When he saw that process at RKO, he thought, wait a minute. This is the way to do King Kong. So he wanted to do it via this stop motion. But to hedge his bet, he also had a huge full size bust of Kong constructed. And a hand and arm of Kong constructed and a foot.

So that for some shots, for example, when he's holding Fei ray in his hand, you've got the hand. When you see an occasional close up of the head, it's this big, oversized Kong. But he did not want to shoot a man in a gorilla suit. He just drew the line right there. I've always thought that Kong's size and his relative size to buildings and people keeps changing throughout the movie.

You're absolutely right on that, Terry. It does keep changing. And this, once again, was. People were saying, well, wait a minute. We built him on this scale of 18 inches to a foot.

Meaning that he'd be 18ft high. And yet you want to make him. He said, I want to make him for this scene. I want to make him bigger. I want to make him 24.

And they all kind of looked at him like, I want to make him 24ft. And then on occasion, he said, forget the 18, the 24. I want to make him 45. So it does keep changing. But he felt that the concept, when he got to New York, he definitely had to be bigger because of the environment.

And, of course, Cooper was right. Cooper had to, you know, do a lot of fighting for things that he believed in. But inevitably, I found through the years he was right. Now, King Kong is really filled with a lot of bondage imagery. You know, Fei Rae in flimsy chiffoni dresses and lingerie.

Terry Gross

Tied at the stake on the island. Or pulled out of her bed by Kang's giant arm in New York. Do you think that Cooper was intentionally playing to a kind of low level bondage, s and m kind of thing? I don't think so. I think that he just thought this would be great material.

Rudy Behlmer

You know, I don't think he ever gave thought to that sort of thing. He obviously wanted to use a woman. And he had not used a woman, really, in his documentaries. But he did want to use. And he did like Fay Ray.

He had used her in four feathers. The Cooper Shutzak production of 29. And he used her in the most dangerous game. Which is a wonderful short story by Richard Connell. That he was producing concurrently with King Kong at RKO.

She was in that. And she was running around in the same jungle. That she'd be shooting in the jungle during the day for the most dangerous game. And at night with Cooper. For King Kong.

And for King Kong. He wanted her in a blonde wig. She was actually a brunette, which she appears to be in. In the most dangerous game. But he thought that the beauty and the beast bit.

That the beauty should be a blonde. So she wore a blonde wig. And he was great friends with her and admired her. And they remained friends over the years. The blonde was probably a better contrast to Kong's dark body.

That's right. And he said, you know, he said to Fei Ray when he first talked to her about. He says, you're going to play opposite the tallest, darkest leading man. Because she didn't really know. You know, she got into the thing.

She realized what this was going to be. But she didn't understand how it was. Because a lot of the time she was up in a tree. Reacting to things that hadn't really been photographed yet. Or, you know, screaming in a cave or doing one thing or another.

And, of course, the putting together of this film, you know, it was very difficult to know exactly what it was going to look like. When it was all put together. So she had to rely on Cooper and shocek. And fortunately, she knew them both. So that worked to her advantage.

Terry Gross

Well, Rudy Bellmer, I want to thank you very much for talking with us. Well, Terry, it's been my pleasure. And remember that big guy.

Okay. Film historian Rudy Bellmer. Speaking with Terry Gross, recorded in 1999. Bellmer died in 2019. After a break, we'll hear Terry's interview with Steve Rifel, author of a book about the making of Godzilla and its many sequels.

And Justin Chang reviews the new film Civil War. This is fresh air.

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Next Godzilla.

He was dubbed King of the Monsters in the 1956 film that Americans saw, but that Godzilla was considerably different from the original japanese movie. Were going to listen to Terrys 2004 interview with Steve Rifel, author of a book about the making of Godzilla and its many sequels titled Japans favorite monstar. The japanese Godzilla is much more than a campy or scary monster movie. Its a very bleak, somber film with echoes of the firebombing and atom bombing of Japan and direct references to the perils of radiation. You probably know the story.

An angry giant reptile emerges from the ocean and stomps across Tokyo, breathing fire and destroying the city. A scientist believes that radiation from atomic bomb tests turned a formerly peaceful sea creature into this monster. The american version of the film deleted about 40 minutes from the original to make it shorter and to make way for new footage that was added to make the film more marketable to american audiences. The new footage featured an american wire service reporter whose reports provide the narration for the story. The reporter was played by Raymond Burr, who went on to play Perry Mason.

Here's how he opened the film.

Raymond Burr

This is Tokyo once a city of 6 million people. What has happened here was caused by a force which, up until a few days ago, was entirely beyond the scope of man's imagination. Tokyo, a smoldering memorial to the unknown, an unknown which at this very moment still prevails and could at any time lash out with its terrible destruction anywhere else in the world. There were once many people here who could have told of what they saw. Now there are only a few.

Terry began by asking Steve Rifle why Raymond Burr's character was added to the american version and why of some of the film's message was changed. Well, this was, you know, the mid fifties, a decade or so after the end of the war. I don't think there was a lot of sympathy for Japan. So the underlying message of the film may not have resonated so well with american audiences at that time. That having been said, I don't know that the distributors of the film in the United States had purely political motives.

Steve Ryfle

I think they were driven more by capitalism than anything else. And what they did was essentially disguise a japanese film as an american one. And if you think about it, what they did was rather ingenious. They rented Raymond Burr for one day. The story goes that they paid him for one day's work, and they kept him at the studio for 24 hours in order to film all of his scenes.

They filmed everything on a little soundstage on Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles. They hired asian actors, some of whom posed as essentially body doubles for the japanese actors. They used over the shoulder shots and whatnot to kind of pretend that Raymond Burr was actually speaking to members of the japanese cast. And they rather effectively, if crudely, incorporated him into the japanese film. And what it did was it created a very marketable giant monster movie of the variety that was so popular at that time.

Terry Gross

Now the ending is really changed. In the original Godzilla, the japanese movie, the movie ends with a paleontologist saying, I can't believe that Godzilla is the only survivor of his species. If we continue testing h bombs, another Godzilla will one day appear somewhere in the world. What's the ending in the american version? Well, you know, the giant bug, giant reptile, you know, atomic monster movies were extremely popular in the 1950s.

Steve Ryfle

I mean, I could run down a list of really wonderful titles like Tarantula them, black Scorpion, giant Claw, giant Gila Monster, Giant behemoth, the amazing colossal man, the attack of the 50 foot woman, and on and on and on. And what was the normal pattern in those films? Essentially, in the american atomic monster movies, the monsters were stand ins for cold War invaders. And at the end of the movie, there would be much celebration as the american military ultimately defeated these warriors, these monsters with new and more powerful military might. Often there would be a new version of an atomic weapon that obliterated the monster.

And the message was clear that no matter what the threat, never fear, the american military is strong and will defend you. And what the american distributors of Godzilla did was essentially, if not completely, attempt to create an ending of that type. Raymond Burr's last line of the film was, you know, the menace was gone, but the whole world could wake up and live again. I think even in the Raymond Burr version of the film, the rather downbeat and poignant ending still shines through to a point. But in the original version, as you said, it's much more pessimistic.

If we continue to test these h bombs, another Godzilla is going to appear somewhere in the world someday. To me, what that essentially means is in our world, that someday, you know, one of these bombs is going to be used again. And if you look around us today, I mean, it's never been more true. I mean, we're just one accident away from a nuclear tragedy. And incidentally, the scientist's prediction was correct, wasn't it?

Godzilla came back again and again and again and again. That's why we're here talking about this today. You know, watching the movie as an adult, I was thinking, well, you know, it's the h bomb that's responsible for Godzilla, but it's the atomic bomb that was actually dropped on Japan. Why is it the h bomb that the movie is so concerned with? Well, the h bomb testing program was in full effect at this time, and there was an incident in early 1954, the lucky Dragon tragedy.

And this is really the incident that may have been the most responsible for the creation of Godzilla. The lucky dragon was a japanese fishing boat that set sail from its home port in Yizu in January of 1954, and its voyage was ill fated from the beginning. They were originally set to tuna fish in the waters off of Indonesia, but at the last minute, the owner of the boat ordered the fishing master to set sail instead for the waters off of midway because he had heard that there was great catches, alpaca, opportunity to be had there. So in late February, they began fishing there. And on the morning of March 1, 1954, in the pre dawn hours, a few crew members were standing on the deck when they thought they saw the sun rising in the west.

And what it turned out to be was an h bomb test. Now, the crew of the boat had not been warned that they were drifting dangerously close to the Pacific krugering ground, the h bomb testing zone at the Marshall Islands. And even if they had known that they were close to the testing ground, they certainly did not know that a test was going to occur on that date. So as they stood there wondering what the heck this was, a few of the men who had served in the war started to get an eerie feeling. And the captain said, let's get the heck out of here.

And by the time they reeled in their nets, they were being rained on with this sticky white ash, this radioactive fallout. And by the time they got back to Japan, many of the men were sick. The radio man later died of leukemia that year. It became a huge international incident. And in mid March, after the boat had returned to port and starting to be, this incident was starting to make waves in the press.

Tomoyuki Tanaka, the producer of the film, eventually clipped a newspaper article and went to the head of production at Toho studios and said, what if these nuclear tests, what if these h bomb tests awakened an undersea creature that came on land and destroyed Japan? And that's really the genesis of Godzilla. There are amazing scenes of destruction in Godzilla. You know, Godzilla in the movie, he's not just a victim of the hydrogen bomb, a victim in the sense that he's become bizarre and radioactive as a result of this. But he also is a kind of like, metaphor for the force of hydrogen and atom bombs.

Terry Gross

And, you know, he breathes fire and he sets Tokyo ablaze. And the scenes of Tokyo burning are really disturbing, especially if you're a child watching it. Can you describe how those scenes were shot? Well, the miniature sets of Tokyo, in some cases were so large that they had to be built outside to accommodate the width and the dimensions of them. They were basically shot using miniature buildings constructed in 120 5th scale.

Steve Ryfle

And, of course, Godzilla, as we all know, is a man in a latex costume who tramples through the set. For instance, when Godzilla destroys the clock tower in the Ginza, that is a very, very accurately detailed model. The amount of care and detail that went into the construction of the miniature Toki, is just amazing. When you witness Tokyo on fire, there's a great shot during the middle of Godzilla's long rampage. It's just amazing.

The destruction, the death toll, is sort of unparalleled on screen. One of the things that really intensifies all the effects of Godzilla, the sense of danger, the sense of destruction, is the score. It's a fantastic score. And worked into the score of the sounds of the monster growling and the really frightening sounds of the monsters footsteps reverberating. Tell us something about the composer of the score.

Well, Akira Ifugube. Boy, what can I say? I think the score for Godzilla. Of course I'm biased, but I think it's one of the greatest film scores of all time. And of course, the motifs in Godzilla were reused and reworked continually throughout the golden age of the series in the fifties and the 1960s.

Mister Ifukabe is a highly regarded classical composer in Japan. He scored many, many, many films, including several classics. And without Ifukube's music, I don't think Godzilla would have made the impact that it did. The music is synonymous with Godzilla, as is Godzilla's roar, which, by the way, Mister Ifukube created through the manipulation of musical instruments and sound effects. Why don't we hear part of the score and you'll hear the monster's footsteps.

Terry Gross

And the monster's roar worked into it.

Music from the soundtrack of Godzilla. The sound of Godzilla's footsteps have always seemed to me to be the sound of impending doom because it's this thunderous, reverberating sound and you get the feeling it's coming closer. And so that's the feeling you're always left with when you hear these footsteps. It's like it's coming closer. The monster or the tragedy is approaching.

How are those footsteps created? Well, there are several accounts of how that was done. It seems to have been the most illogical explanation. Seems to be a large drum that was beat and recorded and, you know, reverb effects added to it. I don't think it was anything, you know, technically sophisticated at that time.

Steve Ryfle

This film really had a make it up as you go along, you know, approach. Whatever needed to be done, the filmmakers found a way to do it. How was the monster's roar created? The monster's roar? Boy, isn't that one of the greatest sound effects in movie history?

Every kid knows it. I remember when I was a child, we used to try to imitate it. Not too much success. It was created by rubbing a gloved hand, a leather gloved hand over the strings of a double bass recording that sound and manipulating it, changing the speed. And that's what they came up with.

And Godzilla's roar basically was created using the same sound effects. Even up until now. Now it's digitally altered, but it basically sounds the same. If you recall, during the 1960s, Godzilla's roar became more of a high pitched whine. But it's more or less the same sound.

Terry Gross

Do you think that the director of Godzilla, Ishiro Honda, saw it as a monster film or saw it as a parable about the dangers of nuclear weapons? I think it's a little bit of both. Mister Honda had served in the japanese military during World War Two. And upon his return home after the war, he had visited Hiroshima and witnessed the aftermath of the destruction there. And he was deeply affected by that, and he said so on several occasions.

Steve Ryfle

Godzilla is Mister Honda's most personal film by far. And you can see the imprint that the war left on him. He worked personally on the script, you know, and he spoke many, many times over the years about how his desire for this film, while it was an entertainment film by and large, but his desire was to send a message, not an indictment of America the monster, really. That's another difference between Godzilla and american monster movies of the same time period. The american monsters usually are stand ins, as I said, for Cold War enemies.

Godzilla is not really a stand in for America. It is more an indictment of the nuclear age. And Honda's hope was that somehow this film would inspire people to think about disarmament. I think today, if he were still alive, he'd be very disappointed that, you know, nuclear weapons are possessed by more nations than ever before. You've seen all of the Godzilla sequels.

Terry Gross

Which do you think are the worst? Well, the film that is fairly universally regarded as the worst of the Godzilla series is called Godzilla versus Megalon. And, you know, this film has unfortunately been probably seen more widely than any other Godzilla film. It came out in 1973 in Japan, 76, roughly in the United States. And NBC actually broadcasted in prime time with John Belushi hosting it and introducing segments of the film wearing a Godzilla costume himself.

Steve Ryfle

It's crudely made, it's a lot of fun for laughs, but it's really not science fiction in any sense of the word. And yet this film really has massive exposure, relatively speaking. And I think a lot of people who just assume Godzilla is this campy, you know, monster that is good for little more than wrestling matches and goofy antics are thinking of films like this one. That's why the release of this, the original Godzilla in its uncut form and this director's cut version is so important because Godzilla didn't start out that way. It had serious intentions.

And yes, it's an entertainment film. Yes, it's not meant to be taken too seriously. We're not talking about, you know, Citizen Kane here. I recognize that. But nevertheless, the original film and the filmmakers who created it had higher aspirations than something like Godzilla.

Versus Megalon. And let us not forget that. Well, Steve Rifel, thanks so much for talking with us. Well, thank you for having me. I've enjoyed it.

Author and documentarian Steve Rifel speaking with Terry Gross in 2004. Rifle is the author of Japan's favorite monstar, about the original Godzilla and its many sequels, and the forthcoming book Godzilla versus the the politics of Japans disaster Monster. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new movie Civil War, starring Kirsten Dunst as a photographer documenting conflict in a future United States thats led to warfare among the states. This is FRESH AIR. This message comes from Capital one, offering commercial solutions you can bank on.

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From NPR sponsor Capella University sometimes it takes a different approach to unlock your true potential. Capella University's game changing Flexpath learning format is designed to help you learn relevant skills at your own pace so you can earn your degree on your terms and apply what you learn right away. Imagine your future differently at capella.edu. Support for this podcast comes from the Neubauer Family foundation, supporting W Hy's fresh air and its commitment to sharing ideas and encouraging meaningful conversation. In the new movie Civil War, which opens in theaters this week, Kirsten Dunst plays a seasoned war photographer covering a brutal conflict that has divided the United States in two.

It's the latest picture written and directed by english filmmaker Alex Garland, known for his mind bending thrillers, ex machina and annihilation. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review. Releasing a movie called Civil War in this election year is certainly one way to grab headlines. Surprisingly, though, Alex Garland's ambitious new thriller largely sidesteps the politics of the present moment. It wants to sound a queasy note of alarm, as if the democracy doomsday scenario it's showing us could really happen.

Justin Chang

But it's hard to buy into a premise that feels this thinly sketched. The story takes place in a not so distant future where Texas and California have improbably joined forces and seceded from the US. Florida, not to be outdone, has also broken away on its own. The president, a third term tyrant played by Nick Offerman, has responded by calling in the troops and launching airstrikes on his fellow Americans, plunging the country into poverty and lawlessness. Garland keeps a lot of the details vague.

He's less interested in how we might have gotten here than in how we would respond. To that end, he focuses on characters whose job it is to document what's happening. Kirsten Dunst gives a strong, tough minded performance as Lee, a skilled photojournalist who's covered conflicts all over the world and is now confronting this nightmare on her home turf. She's headed from New York to Washington, DC, where many expect that the war which has been raging for some time, will end with a showdown at the white house. Accompanying Lee on this dangerous journey are two seasoned colleagues, Joel, a wily reporter played by Wagner Moura from Narcos, and Sammy, a veteran political writer played by the always outstanding Stephen McKinley Henderson.

Per movie convention, there's also an inexperienced young outsider, Jesse, an aspiring war photographer played by Kaylee Spaney, the star of last year's biopic Priscilla. Not long into their trip, the four journalists stumble on a tense scene at a gas station where three armed men are holding two other men captive. The journalists get away without incident, but Jesse is deeply disturbed by what she's seen. I didn't take a single photo. I didn't even remember I had cameras on me.

Terry Gross

Like, oh my God, like, why didn't I just tell him not to shoot them? They're probably gonna kill them anyway. How do you know? He doesn't know. But that's besides the point.

Once you start asking yourself those questions, you can't stop. So we don't ask, we record. So other people ask, want to be a journalist? That's the job. Hey, Lee.

What? Back off. What am I saying that's wrong? I'm not saying it's wrong. She's just shook up.

Lee doesn't understand. Shook up. Whoa. I'm not being protective of her. You're the idiot who let her in this car.

Justin Chang

In time, Jessie gets better at her job. More than that, she becomes hooked. The movie is partly about the addictive thrill of thrusting a camera into a war zone, but its also about the trauma and desensitization that these photographers experience as they put their emotions aside and do everything they can to get that perfect shot. Civil War itself has been quite strikingly visualized by the cinematographer, Rob Hardy, and the production designer, Katie Maxey. They show us an America that looks both familiar and unfamiliar, resembling the battlefields we've seen in footage from other conflicts.

In other places. There are surreally grim images of bloodstained sidewalks, bombed out buildings, and a once busy highway where rows of abandoned cars stretch for miles and miles. Garland has a real feel for post apocalyptic landscapes, as we saw in his script for the zombie thriller 28 days later. In the movies he's directed since, like the brilliant annihilation, he's shown a real talent for building suspense and anxiety. But as stunningly detailed as Civil War's dystopia is from moment to moment, I hardly believed a thing I was seeing.

As Lee and her pals inch closer to DC, they go from one violent set piece to another, each one calculated for maximum terror. There's a nasty ambush at a Christmas theme park display in the middle of nowhere, followed by a chilling encounter with a gun toting racist psychopath played in a mordant touch by Jesse Plemons, Dunst's off screen husband. The result is more of a button pushing genre exercise than a serious reckoning with the consequences of the movie's premise. By the time the characters arrive at their destination, just in time for a daring raid on the White House, civil War feels ever more like an empty stunt, a thought experiment that hasn't been especially well thought out. If theres one thing that keeps you watching, though, its dunsts performance as a battle scarred professional doing her job under horrific circumstances that shes too numb to feel horrified by, as she showed in her great performance in Lars von Triers Melancholia, theres something about dunst thats particularly well suited to apocalyptic material.

I wish her better vehicles than civil war in the future, but its gratifying to see her anchor a major movie. Regardless, shes an actor id follow to the end of the world and back. Justin Chang is a film critic for the New Yorker. He reviewed the new film Civil War on Mondays show. Diarra from Detroit is a dark comedy series described as a homegirl whodunit that takes the classic tv murder mystery to unexpected places.

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The History Of King Kong & Godzilla

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1: Introduction to King Kong and Godzilla

2: The Making of King Kong

3: Godzilla's Cinematic Birth

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